CityLife

Interview: Robin Ince

Robin Ince hopes to convert the masses

"I’VE just been looking for a book called ‘How Do Dinosaurs Go To School?" announces Robin Ince as CityLife answers the phone to him.

It doesn’t come as a surprise, as it is the type of book you’d expect to find a clever bod like Ince prowling the aisles of his local Waterstones for – though these days it could be either for educating his toddler son on the mechanics of evolution; or as research for one of his shows.

Ince’s stand-up has always been imbued with intellect whether it be his left wing leaning rants or incisive views on a myriad of subjects – though it is often interspersed with a couple of poo jokes thrown in for good measure. 

Some of the shows he has been putting together recently have been collaborative efforts, such as his popular Book Club nights, but the latest ones have had a more enthusiastic and scientific slant.

For Book Club the order of the day was to satirise rather than praise, he told us, so his new show decided to take his comedy in a different direction.

“(Book Club) was mainly picking on all the bad books and so I thought instead of doing that I should do a show that’s celebratory about good books and interesting ideas as opposed to books about psychics and lighthouse romances from Mills and Boon, “ he said. “I wondered whether you could do a show that mixed comedy with some actual hard science facts as well and get scientists involved.”

So in a stroke of genius Ince gathered together a couple of friends and experts - Ben Goldacre who writes the Bad Science column for The Guardian and the physicist Simon Singh - and put on a show last Christmas called School for Gifted Children.

It proved popular, spawning more performances in the capital, and then the demand came to move it around the country.

“I had a lot of people saying, ‘oh why can’t you take it out of London?’ In London I can put on 18 people but getting everyone to travel around the country is much harder, so we’re doing a show where everyone does longer pieces,” he said.

'Very passionate'

“Simon’s talking about The Big Bang, Katie Melua and subliminal codes and Ben Goldacre talks about whatever has particularly annoyed him in the world of science. Josie Long ( the comedienne) comes on and talks a lot about Charles Darwin and his letters that he sent when he was on the Beagle travelling around the world and then musician Gavin Osborn comes on and sings songs… he’s got a great new song about the behaviour of bonobo apes. Also there’s a very good song about Huxley versus Bishop Wilberforce, which was the famous debate that happened after Origin Of Species came out.”

At the time CityLife spoke to Ince, they’d already performed a couple of gigs on the tour finding that the show was attracting all sorts of types of people, not just science geeks.

“There are a lot of people from an arts background too who are just interested. Everyone who is involved in the show is very passionate and I think the enthusiasm is contagious.”

Ince is keen to get people interested in science particularly those who only experienced it at school in dusty chemistry labs that smelt of sulphur and methane and were presided over by fusty teachers.

He said: “I read something the other day that was reviewing some science panel show on Channel 5 or whatever – and the review said the show was doing very well with the very dry subject of science. To me it’s quite infuriating that people should think that science should be a dry subject because every piece of human behaviour, animal behaviour, every tree, every star – that’s all science and it’s not dry at all.

“Many people had a bland science education and it’s very difficult for a lot of science teachers to do anything because they’re so trapped in the curriculum that they can’t enthusiastically talk about some incredible anecdote about crab behaviour, which then leads to a whole idea of why we behave as we do. This is the bit that maybe the science teachers aren’t always allowed to do. It’s not just equations and graphs and dryness and occasionally holding a test tube over a Bunsen burner.

He added: “Everything (in the show) is science related and the hope is after the show that people leave, which they generally do, very enthused and wanting to read more and they go straight to their library or bookshop to pick up books about physics or evolutionary biology.”

So, the re-education starts here…

School For Gifted Children: The Darwin Birthday Spectacular is at The Lowry on December 9, 2009.